16 
BEE-CU LTUUE. 
HONEY IS NOT MADE BY BEES. 
Bees do not make honey — they only collect it. Their 
honeysack is not a chemical laboratory for manufacturing 
sweets. If bees are fed om Cuba honey it will be found but 
slightly altered in the combs. If you feed dissolved sugar, 
dissolved sugar will be found in the cells. If bees collect 
honey from dogwood or tobacco bloom, we get an unpleasant 
or bitter honey. Buckwheat yields a dark-colored honey. 
White clover yields a beautiful, transparent houcy, which 
when first gathered, is almost as limpid as water. It is left 
uncapped until the water evaporates, and then sealed air 
tight, — thus preventing souring and candying. 
Bees do not collect honey from filthy slops as many sup- 
pose. They frequent such places most in the spring of the 
year for water, when they need it for their young. Their 
instincts lead them to obtain their drink from ooze or moist 
earth, instead of streams or bodies of water, whereby in their 
excessive eagerness they would be drowned. 
Bees lick or suck their honey from the flowers, with their 
probosces, until their honey sack, which is in their abdomen, 
is filled. They then disgorge this into a cell and return 
for another load. 
When honey is scarce in the vicinity of the apiary and 
abundant elsewhere, they sometimes fly three or four 
miles in search of it, yet they collect larger quantities if it 
can be found within a half mile. Perhaps four-fifths of the 
honey collected is from white clover, and most of this is col- 
lected in four or five weeks, about the swarming time. The 
presence of abundance of flowers is no sure evidence that 
honey is being collected. As soon as honey-gathering begins 
to diminish, after swarming, much more surplus need not be 
expected that season, although they may, whilst the flowers 
last, continue to collect enough for present use, to save what 
is stored away for winter. 
Buckwheat used to be considered a great source of honey, 
but it is very uncertain, and for seven or eight years past has 
yielded almost nothing. 
Willow and maple are the first to yield food for bees, and are 
excellent to feed their young and give them an early start. 
Fruit bloom comes next, and often assists largely in filling 
the lower chamber of the hive. Next comes locust and white 
